Now that I have your attention, a little background. I have attended VSLive conferences for over 10 years, and more recently became a speaker for them. In June, Iâ€™ll be speaking at VSLive in Las Vegas, NV. in the Agile/Design Track on Development Patterns and Enterprise Agility.

In a post that I wrote in September, 2009, I discussed what makes me a better developer, and I want to revisit some of that now. In that post I discussed three aspects:

Community,

Donâ€™t be the smartest person in the room,

Attend a national conference.

I live in the Heartland District (Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee), and we are fortunate to have developer events all the time. Whether itâ€™s the larger events like Central Ohio Day of .NET, CodeMash, CodeStock, and DevLink, or the smaller events like West MI .NET University or KalamazooX (and all of the other Day of .NETs and code camps occurring throughout the district), we have a terrific code of speakers and organizers that are very passionate about the development community.

With all of these regional events, why go to a national conference like VSLive? There are several reasons, but the main one that I go for is the range of topics presented. I go through cycles of different technologies that I work with for various clients. I might spend a significant amount of my time working in Smart Client, and donâ€™t want to get completely left behind on whatâ€™s happening in Web Development (hello MVC/JQuery/Prototype/etc). My first real exposure to WPF was at a VSLive. Thereâ€™s just too much in the .NET FW to keep current on everything.

VSLive will help you keep current on all of the different aspects of development, and provide the opportunity to dig deeper into your topics of interest. So, does that intrigue you enough yet? How about a $400 discount on an all access pass to the conference? Use the following code when you register, and you will get the Passport Package for just $1,295. You can get more conference information and register at http://vslive.com/2009/lasvegas/. The discount code is (drum roll please):

S9V13

Between the regional events and attending at least one national event a year, itâ€™s easy to surround yourself with people smarter than yourself. I love being the least smart person in the room. That means all I can do is learn!